London - Scientists have discovered a treatment for type 2 diabetes which could reverse the disease.
The researchers found that a protein which is already naturally produced in the body cured the disease in mice and they are confident that it could be easily replicated in humans.
The breakthrough raises hope of a cheap drug which could effectively halt one of the world’s fastest growing diseases.
The protein, called FGF1, already plays a role in human cell growth and tissue repair – but it never usually enters the bloodstream.
American diabetes experts found that when the protein was injected into a muscle and interacted with blood, it dramatically reduced blood sugar levels. Crucially, the protein also seems to reverse the root cause of type 2 diabetes, making the metabolic system react to insulin when it had been failing to do so.
In obese mice with the disease, just one injection of the protein restored blood sugar levels to a healthy range for more than two days. And continued treatment restored it completely.
Professor Ronald Evans, of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, said: “This is a big deal – this treatment is very simple to make. This treatment offers a new method to control glucose, in a powerful way. The fact that simply reintroducing the protein to the body in a different way had such an impact was quite surprising.”
The research was published in the journal Nature. - Daily Mail